winter & the third half
by blood sugar love
Summary: better off in two parts.
1. at

"God," Ron wheezes. "God, okay, God, God."

Even in throes of exquisite pain, he's got his hand halfway up your skirt.

-

ABC. 123. Do re mi.

Reading, writing, maths. Spanish language. Then German, then Greek.

Transfiguration, where you make a handkerchief into a duckling. Potions, observing your reflection in a vat of scalding liquid, clear as glass. The fact that things like this occur makes it hard for you to take any of it seriously. Nobody knows this, but magic comes easily to you because secretly, in your heart of hearts, you don't really _believe_ in it.

Yes! It's that simple!

-- What a joke!

Har har har. (This is what you are thinking, as you pull out your wand for the hundred thousandth time. Any day now you'll wake from your coma, and it won't matter if --)

"Shit! God, fucking Merlin, that _hurts_-"

Three blind mice. Three legged race. Three ring circus. Three is a crowd. Nothing good_ ever _comes out of three. Three is awkward. You all should have known better.

But Harry, Ron and Hermione at least_ sounds_ nice. It flows off the tongue, providing the tongue knows that Harry sounds like this: crushed glass, wind whistling, the altogether disappointing whisper of death. The sound of Harry is underwhelming. You've waited for him all your life, some heroic figure on the sunset - and then he finally comes to you, and he's just like everyone else. Really, he is. You should know.

(Currently: cradling a red head, saying "Shut up, you big baby. It'll take just a second, let 'Mione get in close.")

Ron is one syllable, like 'I', 'love', and 'you'. Another good example is 'hurt', or 'don't'. 'Please' can also be considered similiar, but only in his most sincere moments. He'd be better suited for another language altogether, to be honest: something out of only your wildest linguistic dreamings. He'd be the sort of tongue that has no tongue, and all you do is sit and have nothing to say.

Gently.

And then there's you, and you're really quite simple when it comes down to it: Her, as in _hers_, as in My, _only mine_, as in Oh, _I won't touch_, as in your Knee, which is _broken_. You are all buttons buttoned. Your favorite word is 'persnickety', and sweet Merlin, how ironic.

-

Anyway.

Lost in your reverie,

you botch the healing spell. Ron's skin fuses together, as it's supposed to, but then it starts bubbling. It drips onto your clothing. He screams out and upward into the stone canopy of Malfoy's gazebo (white marble; late 17th century architecture; v. sophisticated). He clutches at you. He tears at your hair, fingers caught in your tangled curls, and Harry makes a sound somewhere in between a laugh and a choke.

"Stop! They'll hear us!"

A fist comes flying up (whose?), and then Ron is silent. You struggle to pull him into the shadows, but his knee has been shattered; dazed, he whimpers in pain. Harry whispers harshly to you, _hurry the fuck up_, and his voice breaks. In the light his hands are the color of yellow parchment. As you're propping Ron up, one of them brushes your thigh; his fingernail catches on the hem of your skirt, and for a moment your eyes meet. Sweet thing still has the capacity to blush and mumble sorry under his breath.

The best part of Harry, naturally, is that he's no more a hero than Ron is an intellect. And you, you couldn't be considered the authority on anything but your own selfishness. That's why you're crying now, isn't it? You're crying because you don't know if the blood will ever wash out of your favorite woolen socks. And it doesn't matter how many times you say it: _Ron, Ron, Ron_ can't undo what you've done to him.

Still, you ask:

"What should we do _now_?"

Harry leans over and pulls a long, bloody piece of flesh out of your hair.

-

No, don't start thinking like that.

You'll never stop.

-

Finally, after what feels like hours, you are trying to move Ron again. You struggle to remember that spell for levitating, that charm you saw at St. Mungo's once. That was the night they moved Bill's body into the morgue, where the shell of his sincerity would wait to be numbered, his soul forever safe in catalogues. The man's bruised knuckles grazed immaculate hospital linoleum, and for a moment he almost looked _alive_, one hazel eye winking rougishly. For a moment, Ginny even stepped forward as if to protest: he isn't really dead! And for a moment so did you, except all you wanted was to get a better look at the hole in his head._ Is that where your spirit flew out? Did it hurt? _You interrogated his frozen face until the lights went out all along the wing, and then Fleur fainted and everyone went into a panic.

You remember most vividly how much _deader _she looked than her poor husband, eyes rolled back like that. You promised yourself that one day you would understand that kind of pain, too; you were sure you could never be completely human without knowing.

It's like this:

Grief always comes to you like a hand-me-down (Oh, Weasleys) - like clothing that has been washed to oblivion, a green checkered blouse from the seventies. A second language. You get your cue - laugh or cry - from the reactions around you, and even then you are mesmerised by the movement of your own eyes. You imagine the world as an impulse sliding down an optic nerve. Electricity bolts through blood and matter and past that slight curve of bone, bolts straight to your heart.

Cupid's best arrow is sight.

That is why,

even now, you are eyeing Ron's (very visible) patella. You imagine that this is the closest you will ever get to having him bare his soul to you. A pink mouth opens and closes wordlessly below your chest, tight like a drum. There is the mingling of a scream and labored breath, like Hades yawning, and suddenly his body presses against yours. His spine curves in agony, like parentheses. (_Fuck you. Don't just sit there_.) His chest heaves, his eyes bulge, his fingernails scrape against your thigh. He shoves his face against your hand when you offer it to him to squeeze, and you cut your knuckle against his gnashing teeth.

_Don't die_, you think suddenly, _I just fell in love with you. _

(from the Greek _ἀνατομία anatomia_, from _ἀνατέμνειν ana: _separate, apart from_, _and_ temnein_, to cut up, cut open)

'Oh," says Harry. "They're coming."

-

Later, when black cloaks form a circle around your three, your three musketeers, your everyone's-a-third-wheel, your knife fork & spoon --

Malfoy is standing next to his father, looking taller now (it's been months) and you see the flash of something not unlike fear in his eyes. He licks his lips, thoughtful, and crosses his arms. "Yes, that's them. I can identify all three."

"Good," says Lucius, with seraphic calm. "So can I. Why the long faces? Aren't you happy to see us?"

Ron lets out a long, despairing wail. His cry is cut short by a gasp as his body is lifted, limbs dangling, to the night sky. For a moment you almost smile, and before your arms are bound you manage to touch Harry's hand.

(How lucky! They remember the spell, and it's such a hard one, too, if you remember properly; such a _complicated _murmur! and this is unexpected, they are nice to take him like this -- there's no way he could walk all the way to the-)

But then, between one thought and the next, Ron is flung violently against the ceiling. There is a snap --

a crunching watery cry,

the gurgle of his bruised windpipe. Everyone breathes in the mist of his bewildered heart, decimated against the black and white mottled floor. Tendons and joints snap like dead branches. You watch his head broken into pieces by exquisite architecture, angles and corners, all well-maintained. Every aspect of your anatomy screams for his touch.

-

Later, when they ask you:

"Yes, I'm Hermione Granger. I just turned eighteen."


	2. last

Starts with Lily. You imagine her as shrewd, for some reason : calculating, sharp under her glossy smile, with the body of an adjective and the voice of a haunting half-mumbling verb -- but God, she must have been so loving, it's written all over Harry's face.

(You laugh darkly.)

Then his aunt. Not much to be said here, but she's Lily's sister; cut from the same cloth, even, but she had to settle for far less. That changes a girl. You know. Different pattern, different scissor.

And how sad.

Third is

Cho Chang. Cho Chang, Cho Chang.

The envy of your life. How does she keep her hair so beautiful and her skin all gold & ivory and her mouth dripping cherries? It defies any logic. You'd _really like_ to hate her -- it would be so _satisfing_ -- but she _is_ smart. And even in mourning she's... well, she's just...

Very pretty. That's it, really. Pretty enough that you prefer her over Fleur, who doesn't make this list out of spite.

(Or jealousy, but you wouldn't admit that, would you? Harry cleans his broken glasses just to the left of your shoulder and he looks up and you look away.)

Anyway, both are unquestionably prettier than Ginny, who is fourth and seventh all at once. You would like to say you know her, but nobody does -- and that's because it's all there in those preteen hieroglyphics, all of her scrawled in the only book forbidden to your questing mind. Is it horrible to wish you knew what it was like?

Hmm. Probably yes.

But it's alluring, the idea: that by the time anyone got to Gin she was already all gone, and a new one sprung up in her place.If you wrote in Tom Riddle's diary now, would he reply

in bubblegum ink?

(You shiver.)

&

Next, there is Mrs. Weasley, who has taken to aging far better than McGonagall, sixth, and poor Pomfrey, seventh. She also makes far better peach cobbler.

(But Harry required so much _bandaging_,and students years from now will be making up for points he lost. that is: him, you and--)

Oh, that hurts.

Eight and infinity is Luna Lovegood, who isn't crazy, _thank_ you -- no, not any crazier than you are. It's just that you're far subtler. You're better that way. To hide this fact you've sometimes spoken down to her; but then she knows anyway, knows you're probably more her equal than anyone else. That's really what matters.

Finally it's you, hoping you haven't forgotten any one. So polite in your nakedness. Yes, _you_, Hermione, with your face pressed against the stones here, listening to the murmur of your worst enemies down the hall. The ones who tore everything from you: wand, woolen socks, headband. You can't speak, you're so cold. When you shut your eyes all you see is pinprick stars and a broken skull, but regardless you are still you.

Thinking, thinking.

And tonight, you are completing Harry's history, which is as inexplicably tied to your gender as it is to your straining mind.

Hopefully, this isn't the end of (you) it.

Maybe.

Still, he's crying. It's the first time you've seen him cry in weeks. His mouth is a bruised strawberry, and he keeps bringing his hands up to cover his eyes; but whenever they fall back to his sides, there you are. Nothing's changed. There's no cue to follow, so you stay as you are. You stay blank, shaking and quietly furious: a bitter animal. You stay like _him_, and then Harry crawls up to you in the darkness of the cell, and you're too sames without the difference that was Ron (_stinging you_) and to make up for it you sort of push in closer.

_My anatomy_, you think.

"Hermione, you're my best friend."

"And you're mine. You've always been."

Harry presses forward. Fingers catch at your hair and then settle on your shoulders, pulling you to him. And that's when you realise that Ron is really gone, gone for_ever_. Those aren't his hands, and it's not your mouth you pour into, inside-out. When your body starts to ache, aroused by your own mortality -- your betrayal, because that's what this really is -- and you swear you hear footsteps in the sound of kissing, you start to see how mundane death really is.

Besides:

a lot of times

when people go making history,

they never come back.

That is simple science.

That's statistics.

And --

"I love you."

"Love you."

There is no paper to record who says it first, but you know who means it.

He sounds like he's been dying for years.


End file.
